


aquello que llamamos rosa

by ottermo



Series: As Prompted [27]
Category: Humans (TV)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-27
Updated: 2017-09-27
Packaged: 2019-01-06 05:25:08
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 849
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12204744
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ottermo/pseuds/ottermo
Summary: Choosing a name is a serious business.





	aquello que llamamos rosa

**Author's Note:**

> Written for Week 1, Day 3 of the Humans 4-Week Challenge. The prompt was "In Between".

 

Leo wakes to birdsong through an open window - not his choice, it’s broken like that, and they haven’t had chance to fix it yet. The house is run-down in all sorts of places, and some of the rooms smell a little damp, but it’s better than they’ve had since leaving the Hawkinses’, so it feels like a palace.

He disconnects his charger, replaces his bandage. He can hear voices in another part of the house, and slowly the events of the day before come back to him - they have a new friend now, a brother of sorts. A conscious synth who’d woken in a Bolivian mine, then traveled thousands of miles to join them here, thrilled to find there were others like him. His existence is unexplained, as yet, and not unique - there are rumours, whispers, reports of awakenings all over the globe. Something is coming. Slowly, almost invisibly, but definitely on the rise.

Leo washes and dresses, drifts down the creaking stairs and into the kitchen/diner, where Max is sitting opposite the new synth. Leo doesn’t quite know how to refer to him. He’s branded with the numeral ten, and was addressed by that number, back in the mine, but they’ve assured him he need not always be known as Diez, or Ten.

Clearly an English lesson is underway, because Max is pointing to objects around the room and translating them. Ten doesn’t have the full language pack most synths are equipped with, and an attempt to gateway the software from Max’s head to his had thrown sparks, so they’d given it up. Ten’s keen to learn the slow way, anyway, and Leo’s pleased about that. It shows he belongs. Everything his siblings know, they learned from books or experience. Their father had wanted to see how much they could absorb by traditional methods, not data bank add-ons. The fact Ten’s following in their footsteps makes him seem even more like family.

Leo leans against the door and listens in, relishing the opportunity to see Max as the teacher for once, rather than the student. Max has always been the youngest, the follower. But he takes such a gentle, comfortable lead now, that even Leo finds himself wanting to learn his own native tongue from such a guide. Maybe he can get them to team-teach him Spanish.

“Leo,” says Max, sensing him standing there, smiling as he looks round. “Good morning.”

“Morning,” Leo returns. “Has Mia left already?”

“You just missed her. She didn’t want to wake you.”

Leo gives half a grin. She didn’t want to have the same argument again, more like. About how it’s madness for her to go out pretending to be dormant. She’d be better off faking being human. There are enough “Synthies” about by now that nobody bats an eyelid at a human who seems a little too synthetic. A synthetic that seems a little too human, though, would be viewed with suspicion and fear.

“Don’t mind me,” Leo says, swiping his laptop from the counter and joining them at the table. “Carry on with your lesson.”

Max does so, testing Ten on a few more objects, until they’re distracted by the sound of Leo’s laptop plug clanging against the radiator when he leans down to put it in the socket.

“Sorry,” he says, sheepishly.

Max smiles. “There’s a word we haven’t done yet.” He points. “Radiator. Like _radiador_. The biggest difference is the inflection.”

Ten waits for Max to say the word in English again, and then repeats it to himself, a smile unfolding on his face like petals toward sunlight. “Radiator.” Somehow the word is a revelation to him, and it’s ridiculous how endearing it is. Leo and Max find themselves smiling too.

“¿Es un nombre?” Ten asks, eagerly. He points to where the Name Dictionary is lying on the table. Mia had picked it up for them on her way home from work yesterday, spinning a story to the library that her owner was expecting a baby. Ten had spent much of the evening of his arrival perusing it.

Max suggests in kindly Spanish that he look it up in the book. It works as an exercise in spelling, after all. After scrabbling around in the R section for a while, Ten comes up blank, though during the search he’s discovered ‘Ralph’, which seems to appeal to him. Not as much as ‘radiator’, but it’s definitely broken the top ten.

There follows a more in-depth discussion about why some things are considered names, and others not. Leo doesn’t follow most of it, but he likes hearing it all the same. It’s good to have the freedom to talk like this, marvelling at the idiosyncrasies of humanity from an inside-outsider viewpoint, and not constantly watching their backs, or pretending to be what they’re not.

His laptop finally loads the program they’ve coded especially for looking out for signs of new synths, and Leo clicks ‘refresh’, wondering how long they’ll be blessed with peace like this.

He decides it doesn’t matter. For now, they’re here, and he’s glad of it.

 


End file.
